


But I’m Singing Like A Bird ‘Bout It Now

by LittlePageAndBird



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Insecurity, Marriage, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21616513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePageAndBird/pseuds/LittlePageAndBird
Summary: “You look…” The Doctor tilts his head, his voice soft. “What’s different?”River suppresses a groan, clutching at the corners of her book like a safety blanket. His attentive eyes roam her face and leave her cheeks hot. The obvious, that time mingled with grief has etched lines into her face and taken colour from her hair, sticks in her throat because she half-hopes that there’s still a chance she can get away with hiding it.But he keeps staring at her until she shrugs his stare off and forces her eyes down, well-worn defences bristling. “Well. You can hardly expect me to be dressed to the nines and ageless for the next twenty-four years.”
Relationships: The Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 13
Kudos: 153





	But I’m Singing Like A Bird ‘Bout It Now

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Yes, I know it's been forever. Blame my fiancee.
> 
> Takes place on Darillium about a month after Husbands Of River Song.
> 
> Title from Hozier's Shrike.

Of all the treasures that the universe is full to bursting with - and River has seen, slash, slept with most of them - not one thing quite compares to the glare on her husband’s face when Ramone comes every evening that they sit down for dinner, without fail, to talk her through the dessert specials.

Fussy as she is, she’s only ever going to have the cinnamon fudge cake or the passion fruit sorbet. She knows that. The Doctor definitely knows that.

“Now, this meringue pie - is that new?”

“Well spotted! They just added it yesterday.”

She props her chin on her hand, batting her eyelashes up at Ramone and smile broadening at the Doctor’s tiny growl from across the table. “Tell me all about it.”

She listens intently to the description of a meringue pie like she’s never heard of the thing in her life, all the while feeling her husband’s glare all but boring a hole in the side of her face.

“Mmm,” she purrs when Ramone’s finished. “That sounds delicious. But you know, I think I’ll stick with the sorbet tonight.”

“I’ll keep trying!” Ramone concedes cheerfully.

“I’m sure you will,” the Doctor mutters. Taking pity on him, River toes one of her heels off to stroke up his calf with her bare foot under the table and delights in watching him fight to keep his scowl in place.

“Sorbet it is.” Ramone gasps. “Oh, look at the time! I was supposed to clock off ten minutes ago.”

“Up to something nice?” she asks sweetly.

“We’re going for drinks!”

“We?” River asks. Ramone points to the metal casing that she supposes counts as his stomach.

“We thought we should do a bit of bonding, you know,” Nardole pipes up from within. “Seeing as we share a body.”

“Sounds fun,” her husband deadpans, taking a swig of his whiskey.  
“You should come along, Doctor!”

He almost chokes on an ice cube. River smirks.

“Oh, yes!” Nardole’s voice echoes. “Unless you have plans with him, Ma’am?”

He throws her a helpless look. She shrugs, flashing him an unrepentant grin. “Nope. No plans.”

“Well, that settles it. We’ll come and fetch you after dessert, Doctor.” 

She adores the expressions this face can muster. Above all, its knack for making him look like he’s about to murder everyone in his vicinity and then chuck the planet they came from in a black hole for good measure.

“What did I ever do to you?” he grumbles the moment they’re left alone.

She laughs, resting her hand over his. “Darling, we have twenty-four years. It would do to spend at least some of it apart so we don’t drive each other to insanity.”

He looks utterly affronted at the mere suggestion, but she coaxes until he relents, albeit with his eyebrows set in thunderous arches. Promising she’ll see him at home, she lets Ramone-Nardole all but drag him to the bar area after they share her sorbet and walks back home with a spring in her step.

She lets herself into their cottage, the one he’d had built for them on a little cliff’s edge overlooking the Towers. The fizzing in her stomach as they’d stood before it and he’d pressed a key into her hand in response to her question of who it belonged to flares up, the way it always does, and the pang in her stomach at the silence within takes her by surprise. 

Thinking on it, she realises that this is the longest she’s been away from him since they landed here. They’ve been tiptoeing through this brand new little life of theirs for a month now and he’s been very particular, much to her bemusement, about not leaving her alone. She can’t read a book, or make herself a cup of tea, or get through brushing her damn teeth without feeling his hands toying at her waist like they’re magnetised to it. He’s unfailingly sweet to her, like no-one who has ever encountered this face would believe, and he fusses over her in ways that would drive her to fury if it were anyone else but him, in ways that soothe cravings she’s shocked to find she has.

It’s been the best month of her life by a country mile - but frankly, she’s exhausted. 

It’s her own fault. She’s been ever so careful about keeping up appearances. This face of her husband's seems to like the pace a bit slower, is happy to have long baths and stargaze on the back step and laze in bed as long as it’s with her, and even though she spends most of their days peering suspiciously at his knees for that telltale restless bounce he gets right before he runs off, she’s never found it. She’s the one who pulls him to his feet and whisks him away time and time again before he can sit still long enough to think about how spending twenty-four years on one tiny little planet is the precise opposite of everything _him_.

She’s managed to find a couple of abandoned ships for them to explore, solved a handful of local crime cases, dragged him along on climbs up the Towers’ cave system - he’s even accompanied her on a couple of digs, bless him. She’s antagonised so many people at the restaurant that they’re one more food fight away from being denied entrance and for the most part, she’s been half a cocktail away from not being able to recall a moment of it. Well-versed in adventure and - let’s be honest - general debauchery, she’s so fixated on making sure he doesn’t get bored that she’s barely paused for breath since they arrived.

The Doctor’s gentle nudges to get her to just _relax_ aren’t going unnoticed. His tireless jokes about sunset roots never fail to infuriate her and she knows full well that he’s trying to hammer home just how ridiculous it was that she ever thought he was comparable to stars. Though he never makes light of the belief those words stemmed from, she knows he’s never forgotten them. She hasn’t yet been able to bring herself to address what it means that he has glimpsed that shade in her and not only is he still here, but keeps scratching ever so gently at her surface to uncover more of what he’s seen. Like he _likes it_.

But she keeps him at bay just a little, because what he’s already given her is far enough beyond belief as it is that she can’t quite convince herself that she’s safe to bask in it for the next twenty-four years - that the affection he’s piling on her in spades isn’t at least partly tied up in the carefully airbrushed version of herself she’s always been in front of him. 

And so, despite his rather endearing efforts to show her just how normal he can be, she can’t bring herself to do the same. 

Make-up washed off and hair piled into a messy bun, she digs through to the very back of the wardrobe and pulls out a pair of flannel pyjamas. Feeling about ten shades lighter, she flops onto the sofa and sinks into it with a sigh of relief.

At least not in front of him. Not yet.

A little over an hour later she’s still curled up, back propped against the arm of the sofa with an abundance of cushions and nose-deep in a fat volume on lunar soil composition in the forty-second century, when she hears a key turning in the lock.

“Shit!”

She scrambles for the dimmer switch on the table lamp and cranks it down as far as it’ll go, sinking down behind her book just as the Doctor wanders in from the hallway, prying his shoes off and dropping his keys in the little dish.

“You’re back early,” she manages, her voice straining with the attempt at playing it cool.

Her voice visibly startles him, and his face softens into a smile as he peers through the darkness and finds her. “You’re up!”

“It’s quarter past nine, honey.”

“Is that all?” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his face before she sees him frown. “What are you sitting in the dark for?” 

She stiffens as he wanders over, ducking her head and trying her best to look terribly interested in her book as her eyes scan the same sentence on repeat.

“You’ll strain your eyes.” He tuts, leaning over her to turn the lamp up and dropping a brief kiss to the top of her head before blessedly turning away. “Tea?”

“No thanks,” she mumbles from behind her book. He shrugs, whistling a tune under his breath, and she watches as he adjusts the blanket covering her legs so her toes aren’t poking out like he’s not even thinking about it.

“Did you have fun?” she asks when he’s a safe distance away in the adjoining kitchen. His back turned to her, she smiles at the face she knows he’s pulling in the ensuing silence. “Oh, they’re not so bad.”

“You certainly know how to pick ‘em,” he mutters.

“I _employed_ them.” She grins. “I only pick Time Lords with sarcasm complexes, darling.”

He looks far too pleased at the remark, emptying a packet of cookies onto a plate and spooning an obscene amount of sugar into his teacup.

He comes and settles next to her on the sofa, close enough for her to wiggle her toes against his thigh. He gives her that little smirk, tickling the soles of her feet in retaliation - this face is annoyingly tricky to ruffle - and his eyes fall to her book.

“What are you reading?” 

She hugs the volume to her chest protectively at the amused note in his question. “I’ll have you know it’s a very interesting study that was crucial to the understanding of how early life on natural satellites developed, actually. This first volume is all about the discovery of the Selene trees, for centuries thought by scholars universally to be the first advanced form of life to grow there - _but_ the soil that allowed them to grow in the first place contained organic matter, so if the Selene trees were the first, where did that matter come from? So, the second volume goes on to hypothesise…”

Glancing up from the pages, she can tell in an instant that he’s not listening. Not that he’s wandered off to tinker with the console, or invent a new sonic device ,or accidentally start a war (that last face, god love him, couldn’t sit still if the fate of the universe depended on it). His attention hasn’t even shifted from her. But his teasing smile is gone, and he’s looking at her like she’s as good as kissed him with her hallucinogenic lipstick.

“What?”

“You look…” He tilts his head, his voice soft. “What’s different?”

She suppresses a groan, clutching at the corners of her book like a safety blanket. His attentive eyes roam her face and leave her cheeks hot. The obvious, that time mingled with grief has etched lines into her face and taken colour from her hair, sticks in her throat because she half-hopes that there’s still a chance she can get away with hiding it.

But he keeps staring at her until she shrugs his stare off and forces her eyes down, well-worn defences bristling. “Well. You can hardly expect me to be dressed to the nines and ageless for the next twenty-four years.”

“I never expected that of you, River.”

His sharp retort, though quiet, rings out with its conviction. She peers up at him, torn between loving and hating how quickly this face can disarm her. It all falls away as he holds her in his gaze, all silver curls and soft lines and so, _so_ wonderful. 

For the first time a hopeful thought nudges at her that maybe, just maybe, she’s being a complete idiot about all of this. About him. 

He smiles in that way that brings whispers of _hello sweetie_ and _twenty-four years_ back, the smile that trips her up and pins her down and leaves her barely able to breathe.

“You’re beautiful.” 

She stares back at him in quiet bewilderment, folding and unfolding the corner of a page repeatedly. She’s spent the past month taking him to dinner in dresses and diamonds that could be sold to buy whole planets, dizzying heels her weapon of choice and scarlet lipstick her warrior paint. He tells her she looks amazing like clockwork but his smile when he says it doesn’t reach his eyes like this one does, doesn’t fill them to the brim with a feeling she’s still not quite ready to acknowledge.

She stretches out a foot to kick at his stomach. “Shut up.”

He catches her ankle and pulls in one swift movement, and when she slips down onto the cushions with a shriek he climbs over her, a victorious grin on his stupid face. 

He kisses her like he’s gone years without it, drawing all the tension out until his mouth on her and his palm cradling her jaw is all she knows beyond melting. 

When he pulls away after an age and not nearly long enough his kisses move to her forehead - and she holds her breath as his lips trace the lines she knows are there, pressing warmly to the dusting of grey at her temple and trailing down to the corner of her eye when her smile makes crinkles beneath his lips.

He whispers her name like it holds the secrets to the universe, his breath warm against her lips. “I’d like it on record that I would have much preferred this over a night out with your other husband.”

“Really?” She wrinkles her nose. “Thought you might find it a bit…”

“What?”

“Ordinary.”

He tilts his head, his eyebrows quirking into a challenging arch. “And what’s wrong with ordinary?”

She sighs softly and gives in, massaging her fingers into his hair with a little smile. “Nothing at all.”


End file.
